Evidentiality in interaction: The concessive use of the Italian Future between grammar and discourse

Two competing views (an epistemic interpretation vs. an evidential one) are contrasted in analysing the semantic and pragmatic properties of the Italian Future in its concessive use. By comparing the Future with another concessive marker (the modal potere ‘may’) the analysis demonstrates the semantic restriction of the Future to factual contexts, which proves at odds with the downgrading of factual commitment required by the traditional epistemic interpretation. A pragmatic analysis centred on the interactional properties of concessivity further supports an evidential interpretation, showing that, as a discourse strategy, the concessive use of the Future signals the evidential role of the speaker, who becomes a secondary source by acknowledging information that is intersubjectively shared with other participants in the interactional exchange. Other modal occurrences of the Italian Future fulfilling various discourse functions are also analysed as marked interactional strategies used by the speaker to draw attention to states of affairs that are intersubjectively shared in the pragmatic context.